If you look at the old videos of nukedpixels, you’ll see a few years back I purchased Dynasty Warriors 8. I had it pre-ordered and everything. Casey and Kahuna weren’t too keen on it. I think it mostly stemmed from the slow down glitch that plagued the game from launch. I however have loved Dynasty Warriors since I played 6 with my brother a couple years back. Later on, me and my girlfriend would bond over late nights of playing the game. I liked it so much it prompted me to bring my entire 360 over to England so I could keep playing.
I’m saying this because you can’t ignore the flagship franchise of Koei when talking about their other games. Even from a quick look you can instantly tell if a game is developed by them, and this one is no exception. Since I like Dynasty Warriors so much, I wanted to see if they could create another game that I’d find really fun. I didn’t know anything about Bladestorm when I started it up, but I was excited to find out.
Story
Bladestorm: Nightmare takes place during the hundred years war in Europe. England and France are going at it, and you’re a mercenary that takes on contracts for either side.
The story in this game, like other Koei games, isn’t very prominent or interesting. It mostly deals with the morality of being a mercenary and the bittersweet price of war, and while that sounds very high brow and deep, it’s just portrayed by brooding men in very bad cutscenes.
Of course I don’t expect a hugely enthralling story when I’m playing a game made by Koei, so I didn’t find it disappointing that there isn’t a decent one. I did only play 5 hours though, so maybe it kicks up later on and becomes the Citizen Kane of video games. Judging from what I saw, though, I highly doubt that.
Gameplay
While Bladestorm definitely has the look of a Dynasty Warriors game, it definitely couldn’t be further from it. Instead of only you running around slicing down hundreds of guys at a time, you control a squad of people to attack the enemy. You run around a large battlefield fighting troops and taking over bases. It sounds like a good idea in theory, but in practice, it couldn’t be executed worse.
First off the combat is extremely stripped down, and much of the control is taken away from the player. For example, in the Dynasty Warriors series, you attack by mashing your buttons. It’s visceral fun. You can combo your light and strong attacks, and it makes you feel involved. You can swap between two weapons in Dynasty Warriors as well, but in this game however, attacking is all but done automatically. You hold down R1 to engage the enemy, and that’s it. You choose your weapon by selecting the specific squad to control. Run your troops into people while holding down R1 and everything happens automatically for you. You can’t control your main character separately, so much of the time you’ll be flailing at thin air while trying to get your soldiers to attack. Being able to command the squad separately would be a great improvement to this game. You can sort of do it with another teammate provided by the AI, but I only had another teammate once during my playthrough. You can do special attacks like dashing or a powerful strike, but they’re very boring and they don’t make you feel anymore engaged in the game.
The locations you fight in are sprawling battlefields. Traveling takes an annoyingly long time in this game, with your characters moving very slowly. You can travel faster on horses, but you have to specifically choose the horse squad for that, and they just aren’t fun to fight with. The areas you fight in also don’t vary much. While they are large, many places just seem samey and there’s nothing to distinguish each place from another.
You take up contracts for either the French or the British. Contracts usually tell you to take over a specific base of the opposing side. You could do it right away, but you get more points for taking over many outlying bases. There’s also a sort of day and night transition because you only have a certain amount of days to complete a contract. After a few minutes the game says nighttime and it takes you back to the planning menu. I guess when the timer is up for the day everyone just drops what they’re doing to go back home and eat dinner.
Graphics and Sound
The graphics in-game aren’t all that bad, at least when compared to Dynasty Warriors. The cutscenes, though, do leave much to be desired. The pre-rendered ones look like Devil May Cry on the PS2, and the live ones are just.. badly directed.
The voice acting in this game is really awful. I don’t know who they hired to do voices, but each line it seems like people forget they’re supposed to have accents. And when they do have consistent accents, they just sound weird. They get them to say medieval speak in the game which makes it sound that more silly.
Another one of those few positives I can say about the game though is that the Soundtrack doesn’t sound all that bad. I always felt Dynasty Warriors had a bit too generic of rock music. This game has good string music to give you your ambient noise as you’re running around. Harpsichords and violins are a plus in my book.
Conclusion
Bladestorm: Nightmare is a graphical overhaul of the game from 2007, and I think it should’ve stayed there. Sure, the graphics look better than Dynasty Warriors, the soundtrack is good, and there are a few decent ideas for gameplay elements. Everything else though pales in comparison to any other possible game. You move way too slow across the battlefield, the combat is extremely stripped down and boring, the voice acting is really bad, the story is laugable, and at the end of the day, I just didn’t enjoy playing it. It’s not good for casual play, it’s not good for hardcore players, it’s horrible. If you are a huge fan of Koei games, and you eat up anything made in Japan, you might find some sliver of fun from this. For everyone else though, I would avoid this game at any cost.
